Medications used in health care and treatment are often prescribed by medical professionals with instructions for the patient to take specific doses of the medication at specific times or intervals. To assist with proper dosage, the medications are often packaged in compartments of a blister package (i.e., a plastic material container comprising a number of sealable compartments having an open side intended to accommodate a drug dosage). These compartments are covered with a breakable cover. The blister pack is covered with a single breakable material, such as foil, or individual breakable flaps, in order to obtain a tight closure of the compartments and secure individual packaging. Generally, the compartments are arranged as a matrix configuration including a number of lines and/or columns. Typically, the rows can be times of the day, and the columns can be days of the week or the month.
Ensuring a patient takes the appropriate dose of medication at the instructed time or interval is often a key aspect to successful medical treatment. Some prior art devices provide for monitoring or detection of the blister pack to identify when medication is removed from the blister pack. However, these devices are unable to monitor the blister pack fully (e.g., they're unable to monitor each individual medication compartment, which medication is taken, at what time, etc.) to ensure that the proper medication is taken by the patient. Furthermore, these conventional systems are often cumbersome to use since they require hardwired power supplies or battery-based power supplies which frequently require recharging, and they often require additional hardware for enabling any communication of the monitored condition of the blister pack, among other shortcomings.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.